Through the Catacombs
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 พ.ย. 2020
- Battleship USS IOWA Museum is taking you far off the tour path. COO Mike Getscher and event coordinator Marann Fengler did some "battleship spelunking" in the catacombs - a hundred-foot passageway deep in the ship below Turrets 1 and 2. This rarely-seen and fascinating area provides tricky access to electrical vaults, ordnance stores, and Pump Room 3.
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Now that is the stuff I would love too see, the guts of the ship and the places off the beaten path. For me it would be worth signing waivers so I could see the hidden gems of such a ship.
I agree Ed.
@C. W. Sayre I do not think about the claustrophobia because I did a trip with the Boy Scouts as a scout and adult leader every year to Cumberland Caverns and Raccoon Mountain which took us into the wild areas of the caves. You squeezed through areas and climbed up or down walls in these areas that the regular tours did not go, plus we actually spent the night inside the caves.
@C. W. Sayre Need a bit more time on this knee replacement before I would try it now, but if given the chance I would in a heartbeat.
On my 2nd ship (USS Momsen DDG-92) I made sure to wander every space on the ship that wasn't a closed void (tank) before it was turned over to the US Navy while it was under construction.
Theyre doing the same thing on New Jersey right now! Cant wait to compare the differences
Anybody else notice some of those passageways they were crawling through had been moved over nearly a foot to the right and the bulkhead patched.... I wonder if that was a mistake during construction, or a change made later?
Looks like they had to change it during built because the cable carriers had to get wider than planned originally.
I had the same question and hopefully they have an answer. I also wonder that maybe it was a bigger hole during construction?
Well, in one scene you can clearly see that the original opening intruded on the cable space and would have made a watertight seal impossible. Hence the change. Even without a hatch being present [the hatch seal] it would compromise the strength of the bulkhead having two openings 'overlap'
Just watched Ryan do this on New Jersey. Definitely not a place to be if you're claustrophobic
Worker: Hey Harry, it's quitting time, we got all the pass thrus cut in those bulkheads like you told us.
Harry: You lunkheads, did you get drunk at lunch? The pass thrus are supposed to be offset, not in the middle! First thing tomorrow, patch 'em up and cut them right this time!
That's amazing stuff! Iowa is always an eye-opener! Thanks for sharing with us.
God, imagine how terrifying it would be if you were all the way down there when the ship started going down...
Don't even want to think about it!
At least you could swim through those catacomb port holes easier than squeezing through...but then, you'd have to take a mighty deep breathe to make it all the way back.
I talk about that in the Adamthewoo vid (2 million views). Those who work down there know that, but stuff it way back in their mental closet. No one cries about it because none of your buddies are crying about it. It just is what it is.
amazing keep these videos coming
We will!
USS Iowa is my first love. I grew up in amazement of the USS Iowa Model at the Iowa State Capital.
watching this makes me glad i was an airedale and worked on the flight deck.
Same here.Flight deck V4 division on the USS Kitty Hawk.Nice ocean breeze and lots of action.
Cheers!!! Who dosent love to get into weird places as this...great fun!!!😎🦇🦇
I bumped my head when you squeeze through those tiny access ports!!! HAR HAR And I'm lost!!!!!
Ha! They definitely take some getting used to!
Way cool. I've looked in from the starboard entry in AMR, but it is much different than I thought.
Please do more videos like these. I really enjoy them. Battleship New Jerseys TH-cam page has alot of great videos on Big J and her history. Iowa needs to do the same. Would be cool to see all 4 iowas put out videos. Keep us up to date with there state of restoration and history.
We're working on it!
I was going to ask about seeing the sonar room but there doesn't seem to be any. There's a site full of old cruise books and I found no sonar technicians on the Iowa roster. Then again I realized that's not what ships like this were for. The cruisers, destroyers and frigates are the anti-submarine assets.
@adam fROMIOWA Ryan from the New Jersey mentioned in the 1980s Iowa vs Kirov video that the Kirovs were more versatile and therfore probably stronger one on one. But unlike the Soviets, the US never expected a capital ship to have to operate without its escorting battle group.
Like how some of those pass through has been moved over
I just posted a photo of the the wiring trunk below the base casting of the central column for gun turret 3 on Wisconsin a few weeks ago on a FB group. I didn't realize it was quite that difficult to get to.
Check out our aft catacombs video. th-cam.com/video/u6JF1YTzMik/w-d-xo.html We got really close up to the wiring trunk under the same turret.
Always fun when we were moving quick through there.
It's ok to laugh... ;)
We're still chuckling at Getscher's slo-mo fall through that one hatch.
this was fabulous. I t4ried to picture what it would be llike trying to run repairs in here while underway; the heat, the rolling of the ship, the deafening rumble of the engines and boilers...that had to be a pretty tough job.
as a follow up to this - during general quarters, i would assume all the watertight doors would be shut? If the ship took a hit that flooded one of these compartments and took out all the cabling...how would they effect repairs at seas? or would it necessitate a drydock visit? I'm assuming its below the waterline.
@@music65617 They were capable of a lot of repairs on their own. Dry dock would mostly have been used for really big problems like when Typhoon Cobra messed up one of the shafts. There's an incredible machine shop aboard. They could manufacture a lot of parts.
awesome. Would there be jury rigging of temp lines around flooded compartments? Or were the cable systems too complex for that type of repair? Reason I ask - my grandfather served on a PT boat and used to tell us stories about how they were always coming up with ways to fix broken mechanicals. I'd imagine on a ship like the iowas that wouldnt have been very easy to do.@@BattleshipUSSIowaLosAngeles
@@music65617 Excellent question. We'll find out and get back to you.
@@music65617 Got some feedback for you:
"The cabling installed on the Iowas is inherently water tight provided the jacketing isn't damaged. If that jacketing is compromised you will find out about it quick, real fast & in a hurry. All of the major equipment aboard has 3 and sometimes 4 sources of power available should you lose 1 or 2 due to damage, PMS, or repair work. There is also the installed Casualty Power System that provides you with the means to bypass damaged area's by means of a series of Power Risers, Thru Bulkhead Terminals & coils of Casualty Power Cables located on racks throughout the ship, all that's needed is a routing of cabling provided by DC Central.
I can personally attest to the fact that due to old piping ruptures in the catacombs (both fore & aft) they were completely full of water on a few occasions that required one hell of a strenuous effort on the part of the DC Teams to get them dewatered. At no time during these evolutions was power lost due to cable leakage."
M. A. Palmiere EMC(SW) USN(ret.)
I don't remember how many squids I caught back there skating. I laughed when I caught them. Why? Because 3 years early I did the same thing. I was their top watch at the time. I could have written them up. I never got written up so I said get back to Forward A. M. R. or I will write you up knowing I wouldn't.
What do you mean by "skating"
@@billkilbourne6409 He means goofing off, taking it easy, not working. ;-)
Looking at each of the doorways they pass through (civilian here), you can see the cut had to be welded and then re-located about 6 " to the right. I imagine that since the Iowa was the first of her class, there were a lot of "corrections" to the design like this that had to be made.
looking at a similar video from the New Jersey catacombs, the same correction exists there
th-cam.com/video/SOIv2kv_yhs/w-d-xo.html
Yup. Looks like the wall came prefabbed with a center cut door and upon assembly, someone said "Hey, we need more room for all the wiring. Move the door."
@@LordSlayer001 same problem, different ship!
@@BattleshipNewJersey Now the interesting question would be if Wis and Mo had these corrections or were prefabbed differently.
Several are asking, hopefully they have an answer. Possibly a bigger hole for during construction?
Awsome. I was at the Iowa in 2018 and would love to come back. Are you opening up more areas in the ship by time.
Looked at the videos of New Jersey and have they more rooms open for public? BB62 has been a museum for a longer time than BB61.
Greetings from Sweden.
HMS Belfast in London has a great tour as well.
We're opening our anchor windlass room and our aft steering area. Those will be included on our engineering tour once we're allowed to have visitors in the interior of the ship again.
@@BattleshipUSSIowaLosAngeles Thank You. Hopefully it'll be soon.
At 8:24 that room you are in is where we would store our trash while underway.
Really? Thanks for sharing. Cool to know!
@@BattleshipUSSIowaLosAngeles Yep we would bag it and store trash from the berthing compartment and from the turret. It used to be you just threw trash over the side but at some point in 88 or 89 that stopped and you stored it and dumped it in dumpsters when you got back to port.
How many crew would actually go through an area like this? And would it be on a daily basis, or just for inspections? Or would the dockyard be dealing with all this stuff?
The Catacombs was also a good place to take a book and just get away from everyone for some peace and quiet.
I can't imagine if you're down there in the heat of a naval confrontation or rough seas, ships taking water and listing from evasive maneuvers or hard rudder... and you have navigate those passages.
Thought has crossed our minds, too!
Under turret 2 all of those wires look new compared to under turret 1. Please correct me if I am wrong however after the explosion in turret 2 most of everything needed to be replaced, rebuilt. I wonder if the explosion caused damage under the turret? I'm sure a lot of what you see was under water due to the firefighting efforts of the crew. If it was true that parts of the ship was under water, these areas that we see here had to be where the majority of the flooding occurred, hence the rust being repaired on the floors. Incredible! I wonder how much of turret 2 was rebuilt? Thank you for this great "behind the scenes" look of the Iowa! What a beautiful ship!
Didn’t think about the FF water from the turret explosion....
My understanding is that the explosion was completely contained within the turret/barbette structure. The turret did what it was designed to do. Magazines were not breached. I was told water in the turrets lowest level was about 3 feet.
These are the spaces that all of the non-rates would have had to clean. Maybe a single GM3 to supervise. It would most certainly be a tremendous incentive to get your crow.
At 14:24 there is a very modern LED bulb sitting on a chair.
I've seen a few Iowa class catacomb tours recently but I'm left wondering if there an easier way into pump room 3?
There's a hatch in the overhead at the aft end of the room.
Were the barrel brushes actually stored there or somewhere else in the turret? Seems like a royal pain to move those heavy beasts topside. MMCM(SS) Ret.
Yeah, They would have been in an upper GM storeroom.
Why have some of the crawl holes been shifted in about a foot or so?
I'm getting claustrophobic looking at this, in the middle of a field...
I'm thinking of HMS Barham when she overturned and exploded... You don't wanna be there in the dark while fighting in war...
Why were the hatches so small? I could understand it if they need to make them waterproof . Any responses appreciated.
Navy design and supply principle. You get just enough and never more than you need.
I went through the catacombs of the Wisconsin a few years back and let me tell you being 6’4 it wasn’t easy.. was turret 2 ever repaired? I’ve not read anything on it and was just curious..
T2 was not repaired. Cleaned up and painted, but that's all.
I imagine that those Watertight Doors are normally closed in wartime because the time it takes to go there in an emergency. Did they have problems with suffocation as the Iron would absorb the Oxygen in a closed space?
On a destroyer, similar spaces like that and if the doors been closed for a long time we would request for a Gas free engineer to certify the space before doing work.
In a closed up, in service ship, absolutely confined spaces like this are a big concern. The NJ folks said though that when they turn it into a museum, they open all the hatches and everything airs out, and the air keeps flowing, so they don't have that problem.
At the 10:32 mark, you can see repair weld marks, just to the left of the opening. Did they make a mistake in building and have to redo the hatch? I know this was the 1st of the class and that's my thought. Can you believe the size of that cabling?
Speculation, but that's what I think it is too.
I knew about the passageways but was never down there. I think 5th deck was as low as I ever went. Was on 011 level once.
A real life equivalent of the Jefferies tubes on Star Trek?
14:19 What's that - a compact fluorsecent or LED bulb? They had those in the 1940's?
Was Kilroy ever there?
My respect to the poor fools that had to work there on a regular basses.
That was my Underway Replenishment detail watch. I ran through the catacombs to get to #3 pump room when they called it from Forward AMR. Replenishments came from another supporting navy ship. It took hours. I made a bed across on stack of fuel oil valves. If they wanted me to start the main drain pump? I would. If the phone rang. I'd answer it. I. The doors were dogged. So I went to sleep. . . But don't tell anybody shhhhhhh
Hi Mac, this is nuts down here.....
Imagine when a someone visist that museum and the guide is her grand father who served that ship for many year....
Lot story to hear
my dad was first on it 1943 i got story's from my dad , nobody left from the first 88 who boarded it first .
my dad served on it first 88 to board called plank owners i should of asked my dad for more story's about it going on ,but i got pictures of it as it was in 1943 . he was a 40 mm shooter and when they shot the big guns he walked down to them and they told him to stand in a certain place and when they let off the 16 inch gun it knocked him down , they laughed
Alarms start ringing, lights go out, a voice calls abandon ship. Can you remember the way up?
Yes. ;-)
Pump room No. 3 was for firemain? Which division was responsible for this? Did the gunners take care of it or was it M-Division?
Hey Frank. Thanks for both your questions. We'll get back to you with answers asap.
I'm former Tour Dept. Lead. Mac told me it was A-gang responsible. My speculation is that it's other pumps, like bilge. As far as I know, the fire mains and pumps are in the boiler rooms lower levels.
Now you understand why war is for 18 or 19 year olds
I presume these spaces weren't meant to be accessed often
All the scars on my shins just started hurting
🤣👍
How come it seems like the Iowa's catacombs are in slightly rougher shape than the NJ's? Is that a byproduct from the turret explosion and rush to decommission her? I was just wondering because of that oil slick in the one room and the lack of obvious desiccant pucks lying around - then again Ryan did make a point of point out a some of those on the NJ and they were easier to spot after that.
Mostly it comes down to when the last time somebody painted down there was. Add in factors like how much the temperature fluctuates and humidity and that will severely impact the appearance of a space.
Could be partially to do with lighting, too. Our lights are on in the area, so you might be able to see more...?
@@BattleshipUSSIowaLosAngeles slightly different topic. How much shore power does she draw each month? I saw that some of the lightbulbs were being changed to LEDs and you mentioned that the lights are on down there. It made me wonder what the electricity usage was sitting idle.
@@michaelc5061 Checking on those numbers. Will get back to you. For now, can say that usage is way down right now during the pandemic. Most of our staff is working from home and we can't take the public below, so we keep the power off to all but essentials like our cathodic protection system and our servers six days a week. We shot this video on a Saturday - the one day where we turn the power on.
@@BattleshipUSSIowaLosAngeles its just a curiosity on my part but I very much thank you for the reply. A good comparison would be my home. I used 2700KWh during the summer peak heat. I would expect a BB to be significantly above that, even sitting welded to a pier.
Whatever you guys do, don't stand that broom up!
What is interesting for me is, if this Ship ready to operate. Starting Engines and Turbines.
Should have said.... "This is a very dangerous place BECAUSE......"
How do you all not get lost on this massive ship even with the location markers.
Repetition. You go to the places often enough, you get used to where they are. Definitely takes a little time, though!
Why are those pathways so small?
That's one of the interesting things about these ships. They are huge. Outside. Inside they can be very cramped
The New Jersey I think seems cleaner in this section. Not so much oil.
She's been a museum much longer.
cat·a·comb n. an underground cemetery consisting of a subterranean gallery with recesses for tombs
I don't know of anyone who is buried on USS Iowa.
Crew slang. Happens a lot.
Are you the first woman to visit these spaces? What would be stored in these spaces? And all the hatches would be closed and dogged normally?
1) At least one other woman has been down there.
2) It's all storage related to the turrets - cleaning gear, equipment to move projectiles and powder bags, etc.
3) Hatches closed and dogged... Good question. Don't know for sure. Will ask and get back to you.
It's as well you're all slim!
10:08 -- 'what's this?' Well, whatever it is ["insulation?"] it should not be in direct contact with presumably live wiring. It will hold dampness, which does not play well with metal nor electricity. If they are desiccant bags, even worse, as they will attract moisture and have chemicals inside. Why ask for trouble?
Imagine playing hide and seek in the catacombs.....it'd be easy to win.
Ah good my battle ships arrived it will go with my carrier and frigates corvettes and subs me garden a bit full any one got a spare harbour and dry dock .
In worse snap than Jersey
*Crouches to try and get through the tiny door*
Barney Gumble: Come on in! It's the ordinance storage room!
*Closes door*
Barney: Ow, my nose!
Tiny hatches... like you have no idea!
The word relating to arms and ammo is ordnance. Ordinance(s), are rules and policies.
I'd like the ship to be converted to the largest missile ship around.
Not gonna happen.
The “good” stuff... don’t move it around too much.
I toured her several years ago and bought some old deck pieces. Fabulous ship. I wish President Trump would order her back into service.
Cost to much and not effective
Only way to get a battleship back in service is to rebuild the special foundries to make the gun barrels and armor plate and build new ships with as many parts as possible from the old ships.
bet you was safe down there when the fighting started out side
@10:07 What's this ?
Answer : ASBESTOS !
No, ship's been abated and is inspected often. She's clean. The most obvious asbestos is on the turbines, but it is all well encapsulated.
dangerous my ASS.
let me down there.... I didn't see a CP meter with you. that could be dangerous
I've heard the Iowa is in the worst physical shape of all her class is that true?
Absolutely not.
Not very conducive to easy movement.
Couldn’t be any GMG’s on the “fat boy program”. Wouldn’t make it down below from one bulkhead through to another. 🫡
dangerous my ASS.
let me down there.... I didn't see a CP meter with you. that could be dangerous